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The Futhark (Runic alphabet) on a HP-42S calculator

The FUTH program is written for the
HP-42s
calculator [1]
and displays strings of characters from the futhark [2]
(also denoted Runic
alphabet) as supplied by the user via a two-level menu system.
The input characters are in the user interface of the program listed as we
would read and pronounce them today.

The program can be seen as an example of addressing of individual pixels of the
display of the HP-42s, enabling creation of arbitrary characters displayed as
graphical elements. The program makes an extensive use of the built-in menu
functionality of the HP-42s, in order to simplify for the
everyday user of this eminent program.

N.B. This is a strong candidate for being the silliest-ever program written
for a pocket calculator. It does not contain one single arithmetic operation
and at the time when I wrote it (summer 1990) I did it merely for the sake of
proving that it actually was possible to generate custom-made character maps
for the HP-42s (in this case the futhark once used in historic Scandinavia).
Nevertheless, I today find this piece of code quite funny.

The futhark

Figure 1. The Elder Futhark, used for writing
proto-Norse
(Swedish: »urnordisk», »urnordiska»), consist of
twenty-four runes, often arranged in three rows of eight.
The earliest known sequential listing of the full set of 24 runes dates to
ca. 400 AD and is found on the
Kylver Stone
in Gotland, Sweden.

Figure 2. In the 7th century appeared an intermediary form of runes
between the Elder Futhark and the Younger Futhark, but there are very few
inscriptions. Two of them are the
Stentoften
Runestone and the
Björketorp Runestone.
This is the form of the futhark as used in the FUTH program.

Coding of the characters

Each character in the futhark is in the FUTH program contructed from a binary
representation of its graphical appearance, in a column-wise build-up where
each row of the respective columns is coded as '1' or '0' for white (blank) or
black pixels, respectively. The binary column-wise representation is then
converted into decimal numbers, as used by the built-in AGRAPH function of
the HP-42s. The following example illustrates the construction of the first
character »F» of the futhark:

Hence the »F» of the futhark can be encoded in a 6×8-pixel
representation as {255,20,19,8,7,0}, where each column code is set by the
XTOA command of the HP-42s.

Execution of the program

Start the program by XEQ followed by the menu choice "FUTH". This leaves you
with the screen as shown in Fig. 3. (As it looks on my own, quite battered
1988 vintage HP-42s.)
Suppose you now wish to enter the »n» rune; in this case proceed
with selecting the NIÅST menu block, followed by selecting the N submenu
item (Fig. 4).
That's it! Repeat for the rest of the characters in the string and press TRAN
when finished, leaving you with the displayed corresponding string of rune
characters. Additional spaces can be entered using the SPACE menu item.
The entire set of characters in the futhark, as implemented in the FUTH
program, is displayed in Fig. 5.

Figure 3. Startup display of the FUTH program.

Figure 4. The »NIÅST» sub-menu block of the FUTH
program.

Figure 5. The entire futhark as displayed by the HP-42s!

Example

The Gripsholm
Runestone, in 1827 found as one of the thresholds of
Gripsholm castle
by the runologist Johan G. Liljegren, is one of the most famous runestones
commemorating the death of Swedish Vikings who died in the Caliphate, and it
is considered to be the most prominent stone raised in commemoration of the
ill-fated expedition of
Ingvar the
Far-Travelled.
In Latin letters, the inscription of the stone yields:

Tola had this stone raised
after her son Harald, Ingvar's brother.
They travelled valiantly
far for gold,
and in the east
gave (food) to the eagle.
(They) died in the south
in Serkland.

Typed into the FUTH program of the HP-42s, the first line displays as:

Interpretation of the text:
The text informs us that they died during a Viking expedition in the East, that
is to say across Russia. The expression »fed the eagle» is a
kenning for waging war and killing enemies who were left as food for the
eagles. The large expedition continued across the Caucasus and into the
Caliphate. According to Yngvars saga víðförla, only
one ship returned to Sweden in 1042.

The information that Harald's mother Tola raised the stone is interpreted as
telling that Tola was a concubine of Ingvar's father, so Ingvar and Harald
were half-brothers. According to a different interpretation, Harald and Ingvar
were only brothers-in-arms.

References

[1]
The HP-42s calculator was manufactured by Hewlett-Packard Inc. between 1988
and 1995, and it had 7.2 kB of user memory. The full specification for this
model can be found at the web site of The Museum of HP Calculators,
http://www.hpmuseum.org/,
section on the HP-42s.

[2]
The origin of the futhark can be summarized by the following
excerpts from http://www.futhark.com/:
"The first step in understanding rune lore is the understanding
of the concept rune. Runes were in use by the Nordic and Germanic
tribes of Northern Europe. A rune is not merely a letter in an
old Germanic alphabet, but it bears the primary definition of
"secret" or "mysteries." There were many different runic alphabets
in use throughout Northern Europe over the centuries. The most
common is the Germanic or Elder Futhark. This system may have
begun as early as 200 B.C.E. The Elder Futhark contains 24 letters
divided into three groups of eight, called Ætt (aettir, plural).
The first eight is called Freyja's Ætt, the second Heimdall's Ætt
and the third Tyr's Ætt."